Ishmael was intensely happy.  This earth was no longer a commonplace world, filled with commonplace beings; it was a paradise peopled with angels.

Did Mr. and Mrs. Middleton fear no harm in the close intimacy of this gifted boy of seventeen and this beautiful girl of sixteen?

Indeed, no!  They believed the proud heiress looked upon, the peasant boy merely as her protege, her pet, her fine, intelligent dog! they believed Claudia secure in her pride and Ishmael absorbed in his studies.  They were three-quarters right, which is as near the correct thing as you can expect imperfect human nature to approach; that is, they were wholly right as to Claudia and half right as to Ishmael.  Claudia was secure in her pride; and half of Ishmael’s soul—­the mental half—­was absorbed in his studies; his mind was given to his books; but his heart was devoted to Claudia.  And in this double occupation there was no discord, but the most perfect harmony.

But though Claudia, whom he adored, was his watchful patroness, Bee, whom he only loved, was his truest friend.  Claudia would warn him against danger; but Bee would silently save him from it.  While Claudia would be administering a queenly rebuke to the ardent young student for exposing himself to a sunstroke by reading under the blazing sun in an open south window, Bee, without saying a word, would go quietly into the schoolroom, close the shutters of the sunny windows, and open those of the shady ones, so that the danger might not recur in the afternoon.

In September the school was regularly reopened for the reception of the day pupils.  Their parents were warned, however, that this was to be the last term; that the school must necessarily be broken up at Christmas, as the house must be given up on the first of February.  The return of the pupils, although they filled the schoolroom during study hours, and made the lawn a livelier scene during recess, did not in the least degree interrupt the intimacy of Ishmael and Claudia.  He still sat at her feet beneath the green shadows of the old elm tree, often reading to her while she worked her crochet; or strumming upon his old guitar an accompaniment to her song.  For long ago the professor had taught Ishmael to play, and loaned him the instrument.

It is not to be supposed that Claudia’s favor of Ishmael could be witnessed by his companions without exciting their envy and dislike of our youth.  But the more strongly they evinced their disapproval of her partiality for Ishmael, the more ostentatiously she displayed it.

Many were the covert sneers leveled at “Nobody’s Son.”  And often Ishmael felt his heart swell, his blood boil, and his cheek burn at these cowardly insults.  And it was well for all concerned that the youth was “obedient” to that “heavenly vision” which had warned him, in these sore trials, not to ask himself—­as had been his boyish custom—­what Marion, Putnam, Jackson, or any of the “great battle-ax